Getting spooky with sound: A Minnesota-made podcast dives into the world of horror

CATHY WURZER: We love to feature Minnesota-made podcasts on this show, but we've never featured anything quite like this next podcast. Let's listen to the trailer.

SUBJECT 1: Don't leave your radio. It follows immediately.

[WOMAN BREATHES DEEPLY]

Don't leave your radio.

[GUITAR PLUCKS]

Don't leave your radio. Don't-- don't-- don't leave your radio-- leave your radio-- leave your radio-- leave your radio-- leave your radio-- leave your radio. It follows immediately.

SUBJECT 2: What are you doing to me?

[VIOLIN SCREECHES]

SUBJECT 3: I've been having a hard time with details lately.

[MAN GROANS]

SUBJECT 4: We need your hair for the salad.

SUBJECT 5: Playing all the hits from your childhood, just for you.

SUBJECT 6: Who are you? Like poisonous weeds and stinging nettles in the garden.

SUBJECT 3: The punctures oozed blood.

SUBJECT 4: Come on, eat the salad.

SUBJECT 3: Why won't you eat your salad, dummy?

SUBJECT 4: You don't like it?

SUBJECT 3: Please be OK. Please be OK.

[WOMAN HUMS A TUNE]

SUBJECT 4: Can you hear that?

[WOMAN BREETHES DEEPLY]

Out Cold, a spooky anthology series coming November 9.

[RADIO BEEPS]

CATHY WURZER: That sounds like an old-fashioned thriller. Podcast is called Out Cold. Julie Censullo and Sophie Nikitas are the producers behind it, and they're both on the line. Julie and Sophie, thanks for being with us.

SOPHIE NIKITAS: Yeah, thanks so much for having us.

JULIE CENSULLO: Thanks for having us.

CATHY WURZER: Good work. I like that trailer a lot. Tell me about the inspiration behind the podcast, Julie.

JULIE CENSULLO: Sure. So the podcast is a five-part anthology series. So it's five original episodes that are each their own spooky story. The inspiration for it came from a conversation between Sophie and I just wanting to experiment with making something spooky.

We are both audio producers. We both have some experience with horror storytelling through improv or theater or other audio projects. But we've never done something by ourselves completely from start to finish. So it kind of just started out as an idea, of something we wanted to play around with, and it turned into this five-part series, at least for season one. It's five parts.

CATHY WURZER: Love the fact that it sounds like a nod to some of the old-time radio dramas, like CBS Radio Mystery Theater, those sorts of shows way, way back in the day. Sophie, what intrigues you as an audio producer about putting something like this together?

SOPHIE NIKITAS: Yeah, so I am a total wimp when it comes to horror. I saw The Ring in sixth grade, still have nightmares about it. But I love making podcasts. I love making sound-rich audio experiences. And so I thought it would be such an interesting challenge for myself to try and figure out, would I be too scared to do this, or would it help me overcome that fear?

And I was so excited to get connected with Julie and realize that she, while she's more of a horror fan than I am, had a similar interest in making people be immersed in this terrifying world.

CATHY WURZER: And Julie, what about you?

JULIE CENSULLO: Yeah, as Sophie mentioned, I'm a little more of a horror fan than she is. I also have a really fundamental experience with The Ring when I was young, of watching it and being so scared, but then pausing it so I could see the makeup and see the setting and the set design. And I think one of the ways that I'm able to engage with horror is by looking at the seams and looking at the artistry behind it.

So this was a really fun experience for me to get to play with what makes something scary, especially when you strip away the visual element of it because horror is very visual. It can be seeing something gross, or seen something uncomfortable. But a lot of what makes horror scary is the sound. And so that was the-- what we were trying to explore in this series, is what about sound makes something scary?

CATHY WURZER: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So you've decided to have an anthology series. Every episode is its own story, which I would think would be much more difficult than building each episode, right? That seems like a lot of work. Did you both write the stories? How did you split up the work, Sophie?

SOPHIE NIKITAS: Yeah, we each wrote two episodes. And then another friend of mine also wrote an episode. We really thought of this as an experiment. It was just a way for us to try out this new medium, both in terms of horror and in terms of fiction. Both of us have more of a nonfiction journalism background.

And so each episode is a self-contained story. But there are some themes that tend to come up in terms of unreliable narrators-- so you're not really sure if the person you're hearing is telling you the truth-- and a lack of trust of someone's environment and how to tell if the people around you are people you can rely on and be safe with. So while they're discrete stories, there are definitely some common themes that tie them together.

CATHY WURZER: Of course, I have to listen to more of the podcast, right? We're going to play a little bit of an episode called Remember This.

[KEYS JINGLE]

[CAR STARTS AND BEEPS]

[PHONE RINGS]

SUBJECT 7: Hey.

NORA: Oh my god. I'm so sorry. I'm just leaving. It was crazy tonight. There was this group that came in and kept ordering lemon drop shots like a bunch of adult men. And then--

SUBJECT 7: I told you you shouldn't have taken that shift.

NORA: I know, but I feel bad turning down shifts after I missed so much work the last few months. Apparently, Pammy hired some new server who quit in the middle of her first shift, or I guess she found out her husband died. I don't really know what happened. But--

SUBJECT 7: Yeah, I don't need to all the details, Nora. My mom is probably going to bed soon, but Connor and I are going to stay up and watch a movie. You have the address, right?

NORA: Yeah, I got it. It's in the GPS.

FEMALE GPS VOICE: Starting route to 23 Summer Street.

NORA: I'm heading there now. See you in an hour. I love you.

FEMALE GPS VOICE: In 600 feet, turn right, then continue straight onto I-90 East for 40 miles.

CATHY WURZER: I can see why it's-- well, OK, just full disclosure, obviously, I'm a longtime radio journalist, and I adore anything that deals with audio, right? So I'm appreciating what you both have done here, in terms of painting pictures with audio. So thanks for that. Any challenges, though, in going in that direction, Julie?

JULIE CENSULLO: I think one challenge we both experienced was that when you don't have a visual aid, you have to tell people a little bit more what's happening, and you have to be a little bit more explicit. But we also don't want to say, oh no, a scary thing popped out around the corner. So you have to figure out ways to either communicate an idea through sound, through the sound effects, through the music, or by having your character say something like, I'm driving there now, as we just heard in the last clip, so you understand where we are in space.

CATHY WURZER: Julie?

JULIE CENSULLO: Oh, sorry, that was me, Julie.

CATHY WURZER: Oh, sorry [LAUGHS]

SOPHIE NIKITAS: And then absolutely, I mean, there were some parts where the sound design is so tricky because you say, OK, I think I want the sound of someone turning to the right. And then when you look, there's many different archives online where you can find different sound effects. But if you search "turning to the right," that's not always what actually communicates to the audience what's happening. So often, you have to do a lot of interesting layering of different sounds to try to get the effect that you're trying to go for.

There's one scene in the episode called The Lunch Rush where the woman is in a very crowded place, and people are knocking into her. And I had to layer a bunch of different sounds, like clothing rustling and other types of like impact and hits. And it becomes so abundantly clear how hard it is to communicate things over sound that you think are so, so simple.

CATHY WURZER: Did you two-- you know what a Foley artist does, obviously, because you're in the business. Did you have the opportunity to create some of your own sound effects as a Foley artist, or did you use sound effects that were available online?

JULIE CENSULLO: Yeah, it's a mixture of both. So we did use some that were available online. But in the clip you just played, that you hear someone getting into a car and turning on the car. That was me in my car turning on my car.

And the backing track of most of that is me driving around Minneapolis. So it was a mixture of both finding sound effects online and also creating our own. I know Sophie also created a lot of her own effects for some of the episodes.

CATHY WURZER: And Sophie, what kind of--

SOPHIE NIKITAS: I did ask two of my friends to just bump into each other at the YWCA uptown, so thank you so much to the YWCA staff for putting up with that.

CATHY WURZER: [CHUCKLES] And I can see you doing take after take. That's good. What kind of feedback have you received? I know you dropped this podcast in November. What kind of reaction have you received so far? Sophie?

SOPHIE NIKITAS: Yeah, we've gotten a lot of good responses. I personally-- so the episode The Lunch Rush takes place in the Minneapolis Skyway System. And I have gotten a lot of reaction to that, of people quoting that at me, telling me they've been in the Skyways, telling me that now they're a little more unsettled by the Skyway System now that they've listened to that.

But our episodes, I think, really range from more dark and funny to really scary. And so it's been interesting to see the range of reactions from people who are like, ooh, that really, really freaked me out, to that actually just really made me laugh.

CATHY WURZER: Well, you two have done quite a lot of work on it it. Sounds fantastic, by the way. I wish you both all the best.

JULIE CENSULLO: Thank you.

CATHY WURZER: Thank you so much.

SOPHIE NIKITAS: Thank you.

JULIE CENSULLO: Yeah, thanks for having us. You can listen to Out Cold wherever you listen to podcasts.

CATHY WURZER: That is correct. Thank you. Sophie Nikitas, Julie Censullo are the producers behind the podcast Out Cold. As you know, you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. And we'll have a link, by the way, on nprnews.org.